The most beautiful places in Sweden

Sweden is a country of rare beauty, even amid its starkest northern landscapes. Its cities and towns testify to 1000 years of urban life, but there are precious places offering glimpses into even older traditions of human settlement.

Visby

The Hanseatic League grew in Germany, but the Swedish port of Visby on Gotland became the league’s key point in the centre of the Baltic. Visby today is a world-heritage treasure with preserved town walls and fascinating stone-paved medieval streets.

A visit to Visby is a must and a few hours’ ferry travel from Stockholm puts visitors in a world of strange carved picture stones unique to independent-minded Gotland, ruined medieval churches, museums and stark island landscapes. The key to understanding Visby is the fact that its strategic position made it firecely contested and not always Swedish.